4. Maddox
MADDOX
Game one of the season.
I am in a mood. The mood has a cause. The cause is that yesterday I told the kid to get on his knees in front of the whole room and the kid walked.
Not the walking. The walking was fine. The walking was hot.
It's what happened to me the night after.
It's that I went home and laid in bed, replaying the walk.
The back of his neck leaving the showers.
The wet hair. The stupid towel held in front of him.
I replayed it like it was a highlight reel until at some point I fell asleep.
When I woke up, the replay was still going.
This is not what a man who is doing this to piss off a coach does.
I put the mood on the ice.
Paul benches his son. Scratches him for game one.
I see the lineup on the whiteboard an hour before puck drop and Theo's name isn't on it. It’s an asshole move, and I file it with the other asshole moves I have on Paul Laurent.
Theo sits in the tunnel in warmup gear with a clipboard he doesn't need and a face he is trying very hard not to wear.
I catch his eye twice during warmups. Once by accident. Once not.
Then the game.
Fifteen minutes in, I hit their third-line center so hard into the boards that their trainer jogs out and the crowd does the thing where they half-stand while they decide whether to boo or cheer and then settle on cheer because home barn.
The kid gets up. I don't apologize. I skate past him close enough that he flinches.
Two minutes later, I put a backhand past their tendy from a bad angle that everybody at my old camp said I'd never land in a real game and the barn blows up and Phoenix grabs me on the celly and says, “That's your fucking mood, Mad Dog?” and I grin at him and do not say what the mood actually is.
I look once at the tunnel. I can't see in from this angle. I skate back to the bench.
We play sixty minutes. We score four. They score two. I'm plus three and I take one minor for roughing that was worth the two minutes. The whole rink is on me. Not like it's on Phoenix. Different flavor. Phoenix is the captain. I am the fun.
Paul doesn't look at me once from the bench. Not during the hit. Not during the goal. Not during the celly. That's also fine. That's information.
End of the game, the room is a noise I know.
Champagne on Phoenix's head for the first win of the year.
Somebody is playing some bullshit country song.
Jax is half-naked in the middle of the floor recounting his own penalty for interference like it was a game-winner.
Grayson has taken his pads off and put a beer in his hand inside of four minutes, which is the veteran move.
Theo walks past the open door of the locker room in his street clothes.
He did not change in here. He changed somewhere else.
He is carrying a garment bag over one shoulder and is pretending the inside of the garment bag is very interesting, and he is gone before anyone in the room says anything to him.
I watch him go.
I pull my phone out of my bag and I open my thread with Dominic. Dominic is a guy who works at a gallery four blocks from the rink and who looks exactly like you’d expect someone who works for a gallery to look. I haven't texted him in six weeks.
You in town?
He writes back in ten seconds. yes. Wolves win?
you know it
you inviting me somewhere?, he texts like he doesn’t know the game.
usual place. 45
Dominic is the guy. Dominic is what I do after a game-one win. Dominic is hot, skilled, undemanding, and available on twelve-minute notice because Dominic is in it for the same reasons I am. I have known him for two years and I know exactly what he looks like in a bathroom mirror.
I shower. I dress. I head out.
The usual place is Vigil, which is a bar three blocks from the facility with dim lighting, good whiskey, and a bartender who knows me by face and not by name, which is the correct proportions.
I walk in within thirty-eight minutes. Dominic is already at a high-top by the wall with two drinks poured and his jacket off.
“Creed.” He stands. He kisses me on the cheek, which is a bit, and I let him do it because it's funny. “Good goal.”
“Thanks.”
I take the drink. I take a swallow. I look at his mouth. He looks at mine. We both know the ninety minutes we're about to have.
Then the door opens behind me and I hear Jax's voice.
“MAD DOG.”
I close my eyes for a full second.
I turn around.
The entire Wolves team is filing into the bar.
All of them. Even Grayson, who I was sure would go home.
Even the kid assistant trainer, who looks terrified.
Even—and this is the part that I almost laugh at—Theo, who is behind Phoenix with both hands in his jacket pockets and the most convincing I have been kidnapped face I have ever seen on a twenty-year-old.
Phoenix sees me and raises a hand and crosses toward the high-top. His hair is still damp at the front from the postgame champagne. His grin is all teeth.
“Bud. Post-game.”
“Captain.”
He looks pointedly at Dominic. He looks pointedly at the two drinks. He looks pointedly at me.
“We were not aware you had plans.” He's smiling. He is not sorry.
“I did not advertise them.”
“Well. Merge them.”
The team is already fanning out. Jax has commandeered two pool tables.
The assistant trainer is ordering shots for people who did not ask for shots.
Theo has taken a seat at the far end of the bar where the light is lowest and has been handed a beer he did not ask for by Grayson, who is making a point.
Dominic comes up to my elbow, carrying both drinks. He hands me mine.
“Your whole team is here.”
“My whole team is here.”
“Wow.”
He has the decency to be entertained rather than annoyed, which is one of the six things I like about him.
“Do I need to leave?”
I look at him. I look at Theo, who is not looking at me. I look at Dominic again.
“No. Give me ten minutes to do the captain thing. Then we're leaving.”
The captain thing takes sixteen minutes.
I go around the team. I clink Phoenix's glass.
I chirp Jax's penalty for interference until he's crying laughing and has to sit down.
I let the trainer take a photo of me with his phone because he's new and it's his first game and I know from experience that a first-game photo with a veteran is something a guy tells his mom about.
I stand at the pool table for two minutes long enough to beat Grayson at a shot nobody thought I could make, and Grayson shakes his head at me the way only a man who has lost to me many times can, and I buy him the next round out of residual respect.
I do not go to Theo's end of the bar.
I drift back to Dominic. I put my hand on his waist in a way the room can see. Nobody in this room is going to be surprised by me touching a man in a bar. Nobody in this room is going to be surprised by anything about me. I have been me for five years. I made sure of it.
“Ten minutes out. Bathroom?”
“Classy, Creed.”
“Very.”
He grins. He goes first. I follow in ninety seconds because I'm not an animal.
The bathroom at Vigil has a single-stall at the back with a lock that works.
Dominic is waiting in there when I come in.
He pulls me in by the belt loops. He kisses me.
He is a very good kisser. I have been here before.
I know exactly what the next eight minutes look like.
The next eight minutes are: I bend him over the sink, I get what I came for, we wash up, we leave, I sleep the sleep of a man whose body is taken care of.
He gets his mouth on my neck. I put my hand in his hair.
I see the back of Theo's head leaving the showers.
I am in a bathroom with a very good-looking man who wants me and who I have never had a problem with, and I am seeing the back of a twenty-year-old's wet hair.
Dominic notices the half-second I go still. He pulls back an inch and looks up at my face with a mild curiosity I do not deserve.
“You with me?”
“Yeah.”
He runs his thumb along my jaw, testing.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
He waits. He does not kiss me. He is a man who has picked up a lot of signals over a lot of years and he has picked one up now.
He kisses me again anyway because I told him I was fine. I kiss him back. I put my hand on his belt. I stop.
I stop with my hand on his belt and I know, with a clarity I was not ready for at nine-forty on a Saturday night, that I am not going to do this.
“Fuck.”
“Creed.”
“I can't.”
He steps back. He looks at my face. Whatever he sees on it makes him not angry.
“Someone?”
I don't answer.
He tips his head a fraction. He is waiting for me to work it out.
“Creed. Someone?”
“I don't know what it is. I can't. I'm sorry. Not tonight.”
He buttons the one button he'd opened on his shirt. I have always liked the steadiness of his hands. They are steady now.
“Okay.”
I pull out my wallet before I know what I'm doing.
“I'll pay for the drinks.”
“I got the drinks.”
“I owe you drinks.”
He laughs, once, at my expense.
“You owe me an honest answer next time I ask you what's up.”
“Okay.”
He puts his hand on my cheek for one second. He leaves the stall. The door clicks. The tap runs in the main part of the bathroom. The hand dryer. Footsteps. Door.
I stand in the stall with my forehead against the back of the door and breathe.
I have not done that before.
I have not, at thirty, had a man whose body I wanted and who wanted me back and who was in a bathroom with me, and not gone through with it. That has not been on the menu of things that happen to me. That is not a thing my body has ever pulled on me.
This is about Paul, I tell the door.
The door doesn't answer. The door is done with me too.